Resource scarcity and outcome conflict in time-sharing performance

The efficacy of the resource-scarcity and outcome-conflict views in explaining dual-task interference was examined. A discrete—continuous task pair was purposely chosen to allow fine-grained analysis of time-shared performance. The relative priority of the dual task was manipulated by a secondary task technique to test for performance tradeoff that would be indicative of resource allocation. The temporal predictability of the discrete stimuli was manipulated to examine possible strategic avoidance of interference. The moment-by-moment data did not reveal any evidence for a switching strategy. It was concluded that the intricate interference patterns could be more easily interpreted within the resource framework than within the outcome-conflict framework.